Understanding the Pork Barrel

August 18, 2013

Everyone in the loops and cobwebs of the Pork Barrel scam is guilty. None in the houses of corruption would point a finger or raise a fist to protest against this mother paker of all scams. While the media is grilling Napoles and those bombs, explosion and stupid collision of big ships would want to draw out public perception from this scam, citizens wouldn’t blink an eye to monitor every bit of news related to the scam. Why? Because each one of them (or us) feels robbed by the rotten system of loops and cobwebs of layers of deceit and deception. Why? Because the taxes from simple candies, cigarettes, toyo and suka that we buy from the sari-sari store goes to the treasury that will be a part of the pork barrel recipe.

Each time we renew our license and customs would tax us exorbitantly of the parcels we sent through Fedex we are ripped off once these taxes and fees becomes a fraction of the source of the infamous PDAF. Nonetheless the understanding of the citizenry should not stop at the house of Napoles na mukhang mapapanis na sa media. This should go beyond napoles where from the different sources, verified or otherwise, gives us the total picture of how the pork barrel system works.

The budget or budgeting is a function of government that provides the whole bureaucracy the oil to make each of the the machinery of each departments and agencies run smoothly. It starts with the call of the CEO to have every offices under his command to provide him the budget for deliberation for the coming year.

The process begins and ends with the CEO. The figure / diagram is self explanatory. The next thing is we should understand the layer upon layer of the web of men and women, organizations, agencies, departments etc. and how these relationships work. At the top are the offices of the DPWH, the Office of the President and the Houses of Thieves. They have the biggest allocation in the government budget that is solely designed to favor them. The second layer are the power brokers that includes those government employees that works within these agencies/offices; the private citizens like Napoles with their NGOS; and the NGOs that have been created by the politicians in the Houses of Thieves. This layer is responsible for the haggling and higgling of percentages.

The last part of the process would be the approval part… who approves the releases… they are pictured in the diagram. Who benefits from them are the assholes who have their luxury SUVs parked in front of the hotels and posh restos that we see everyday. Now aren’t you wondering why the Philippines is so fucked up economically?

What we need is to ask Ban Ki Moon of the United Nations to bring in a fact finding commission on this scam. Everyone in the bureaucracy is on the take.